Question 1

While this may be a very broad answer to what patterns have developed, but it seems like the United States have always found an enemy that is somehow involved with the Middle East since the end of World War II. This can be indirectly through the USSR trying to bring some Middle Eastern states under it’s sphere of influence, or more directly through ISIS coming out from the region.

This has also brought out military action into the Middle East, although at times the United States has opposed different sides. During the Cold War, the United States, in an effort to confront Soviet expansion in line with it containment policy, support a military group Al Qaeda. At the time this would appear to be good for the United States. They would not have to actually fight with the Soviet Union and would still be able to keep them from spreading. However, this would eventually lead to conflict for the United States.

From the early 2000s and on the United States would find an enemy in different terrorist organizations in the Middle East. One of the groups was Al Qaeda that the United States had funded around twenty years earlier. This was the main conflict in the Middle East that the United States was involved with. They also had military oppositions between a split off from Al Qaeda known as ISIS.

While it is a broad statement, the big pattern among the United States interests in the Middle East has been military conflict.